There’s no greater mental barometer of how well a holiday went than the genuine feeling as you stumble onto the train at the end of the week (or in my case about four days) that you’re leaving a place were you felt complete and yourself and complete within yourself and those things are effortless, to return to a place where you have to work at them. That’s what vacations are supposed to do, but you hear so often about how stressful they can be, how often they’re nothing like a holiday because of the hassle involved in attempting to enjoy yourself, I’m so pleased and elated that I can genuinely say that I did enjoy myself, despite having developed blisters by the end of the first day and painfully limped through the rest of it.

I’ll be boring you stupid in the coming days (and weeks?) with tales of Stratford-Upon-Avon (and photos, so many photos) but I want to make the most of my Shakespearean glow by finally watching the BBC adaptations of his history plays so I’ll not spend too much time tapping things here today. Just to say this: after watching the results, I’m glad I didn’t follow my original idea of a coach tour. I watched coaches park up throughout the town, outside the various designated Shakespeare houses, the passengers herded off and into the dwelling which they’d trundle through briefly, take some photos, buy some souvenirs before being led back to the coach and on to the next attraction, presumably working through all five before returning to wherever they came from without the time to breath in the atmosphere.

To spend just half an hour here and there is not enough time. Much better, as I did, to slowly let the story of the bard's life through his home unfold slowly over a few days, seeing the places where he and his family were born, died, were buried and commemorated and discovering the world in which all of that happened. If you’ve already been yourself, you’ll know that there aren’t many places like it in Britain. It might have gained many of the elements of a modern town, the same high street shops which make most places seem like a photocopy of each other these days and industrialisation and suburbia just outside the centre, at magic hour it still retains the stillness of an ancient village, a reminder of what we've lost.

There’s no greater mental barometer of how well a holiday went than the genuine feeling as you stumble onto the train at the end of the week (or in my case about four days) that you’re leaving a place were you felt complete and yourself and complete within yourself and those things are effortless, to return to a place where you have to work at them. That’s what vacations are supposed to do, but you hear so often about how stressful they can be, how often they’re nothing like a holiday because of the hassle involved in attempting to enjoy yourself, I’m so pleased and elated that I can genuinely say that I did enjoy myself, despite having developed blisters by the end of the first day and painfully limped through the rest of it.

I’ll be boring you stupid in the coming days (and weeks?) with tales of Stratford-Upon-Avon (and photos, so many photos) but I want to make the most of my Shakespearean glow by finally watching the BBC adaptations of his history plays so I’ll not spend too much time tapping things here today. Just to say this: after watching the results, I’m glad I didn’t follow my original idea of a coach tour. I watched coaches park up throughout the town, outside the various designated Shakespeare houses, the passengers herded off and into the dwelling which they’d trundle through briefly, take some photos, buy some souvenirs before being led back to the coach and on to the next attraction, presumably working through all five before returning to wherever they came from without the time to breath in the atmosphere.

To spend just half an hour here and there is not enough time. Much better, as I did, to slowly let the story of the bard's life through his home unfold slowly over a few days, seeing the places where he and his family were born, died, were buried and commemorated and discovering the world in which all of that happened. If you’ve already been yourself, you’ll know that there aren’t many places like it in Britain. It might have gained many of the elements of a modern town, the same high street shops which make most places seem like a photocopy of each other these days and industrialisation and suburbia just outside the centre, at magic hour it still retains the stillness of an ancient village, a reminder of what we've lost.

Even though I seem to have spent 40% of my life sitting in front of little rectangular boxes punching keyboards, I’ve never actually been very good at computer + video games. Even when everyone thought that a 12” disc was acceptable and that instead of loading a game onto the machine you had to copy-type the thing from Personal Computer World, I’d have trouble getting the little cross (or whatever passed as a spaceship) into the bracket (docking port). In the arcade, ten pence would last fractionally longer than the lick of an ice cream.

What was a bit embarrassing was my Dad could play them better than I did. He’d sit up for hours into the night playing Acorn Electron Pac-man clone ‘Snapper’ and the platformer ‘Chuckie Egg’, usually the same game, usually for hours on end. I’d try too, but there isn’t much fun in trying to beat an impossible score.

I think the only game I’ve ever made any sense of was Lemmings . . . perhaps it was the futility of their little lives, or the fact you could play each level as many times as you liked until you got it right . . .

Film Day four. I might be going to Coventry today or Warwick. I haven't decided yet.

I’m aware that sometimes when I’m criticising the master’s work, I can sound like Oliver Peyton picking over some inedible lump of goop cooked to perfection by a chef with a Michelin asterisk on the Great British Menu and probably just as wrong sometimes, but to my eyes and ears, Spellbound is a disappointingly uneven and often dull film, the most attractive reason to watch being the central dream sequence created by Salvador Dali, in which the artist relishes the opportunity to transfer the elements of his painting into a moving picture format. To save you the time, here it is:

Unlike his paintings (and to some extent his earlier film collaborations), Dali’s work is being pressed into service to help explain Gregory Peck’s character’s psychological quagmire and all of these exciting elements are explained at the climax, the theory being that all unconscious elements of the human psyche, especially dreams can examined and interpreted.

Though there’s undoubtedly some excellent performances and the usual quota of surprises, my main problem with the film is that Hitch is repeating himself – the wrongly accused is on the run again. I’m guessing that the director is keeping these elements formulaic because the overall subject, psychiatry, is somewhat outside of the mainstream and he’s attempting to keep his audience on side. Except the execution is weirdly anticeptic and there’s a lack of chemistry between Peck and his leading lady Ingrid Bergman, who also seems uncomfortable with her part as his doctor and lover.

The director himself lists many of these problems to Truffaut in their interviews together and notes that he wanted to use a realistic approach because of the psychoanalysis. He was reluctant to fantasize and wanted to use a logic for once. Odd, then that best sequence is clearly the Bond-like skiing adventure and you can’t help but wonder if a much more interesting film might have come from setting the whole thing within the Daliscape, with Peck’s character trying to escape his dreams metaphorically instead of literally, in other words, an early version of the old Amiga game Weird Dreams or Richard Linklater’s animation Waking Life with Bernard Hermann writing the soundtrack.

When I was trying my hand at script writing in the late nineties, one of the subjects I was interested in was how films effected their audiences. When Kevin Smith's film Dogma was released there were a number of protests about its content by religious groups in the US. Famously, as a wheeze, Smith himself protested his own movie:

There have been similar protests for everything from The Life of Brian to The Last Temptation of Christ and I wondered if it would be possible to write a screwball romance about an atheist and a Christian who meet and fall in love at a protest for the Monty Python film and then we'd revisit their rocky relationship during the time frames of when each of these 'controversial' films are released.

I hadn't developed it too much, but I did make a (very) rough start on the script and that's what's published below as is, typos and other flotsam intact. Keep in mind, if you know the place, the cinema is supposed to be the Hyde Park in Leeds.

===========================

CAPTION: ‘1999’.

INT. CAFÉ – STUDENT UNION – UNIVERSITY BUILDING. DAY.

A girl with blonde hair in power dress is sitting at a shabby looking café table looking nervous. This is JASMINE RAINE. In front of her are placed, two bottles of ‘Volvic’ water and two shrink wrapped packets of SANDWICHES.

MAN’s VOICE: I could only get Tuna.

JASMINE: I hate Tuna.

A man with short dark hair in a white shirt and stripy tie sits down in front of her. This is TOM PARKER.

TOM: So do I. But I’m also hungry.

JASMINE reaches forward and grabs the water.

JASMINE: Why do we do this . . .

JASMINE starts to unscrew the water bottle.

JASMINE: . . . why do we put ourselves through this?

TOM: Because you love it, and we make a great team.

Tom bites into his sandwich.

JASMINE: But these ones. I like having at least a week to prepare. But two hours.

TOM: (gesturing with his sandwich) Look, its going to be alright. You always think of something. I’ll just go in and talk about freedom of speech, talk about book burnings, y’know stir it up and then you come in for the . . .

JASMINE: Kill? I don’t know. This is too close.

JASMINE takes a swig of water.

TOM: You keep saying that, but you won’t tell me why.

JASMINE: I can’t.

TOM: Well, you’ve got ten minutes. Plenty of time.

INT. LECTURE THEATRE – UNIVERSITY. DAY.

The lecture theatre is in some disrepair, but this doesn’t seem to bother the people who have filled it, and clapping loudly.

They are watching a debate. A chairman (slightly balding, late fifties) sits at a long desk underneath a blackboard with the motion – ‘This house believes the film ‘Dogma’ be banned?’ - scrawled across it. On the left hand side of the chairman sit two men in grey suites behind a card which reads ‘For the motion’. To the right sit a still confident TOM and a still nervous JASMINE, who is smiling despite herself. Sitting on the desk in front of everyone is a glass of water.

The chairman turns to left.

CHAIRMAN: And I now believe it is the turn of John to second the motion.

JOHN, who is sitting at the far end stands and reaches into his jacket pocket for his prompt cards, which he proceeds to read from.

JOHN: As my learned friend has highlighted there is little recoups but to support this motion. My argument is simply this – any film which blasphemes against someone’s religious system can only be damaging. The writer James Blish once suggested that every budding writer should ask themselves one question – ‘Who does it hurt?’ Kevin Smith, the writer/director seems to have forgotten this and offers a film which hurts believers everywhere, by presenting the following – two murderous angels, a profain ‘13th’ apostle, the supposed decendant of our Lord working in a laundrette, at the Crucifixion, he offers an obscene gesture . . .

As the list continues, the audience offer a mixture of stunned silence, shock and laughter.

JOHN: . . . and the almighty is portrayed as a rock singer. None of which occurred in the gospels and which go against the fundamental beliefs of over a fifth of the world’s population. Please, support this motion.

The hall again erupts with applause.

TOM: (whispering to JASMINE) He’s done his research.

JASMINE nods nervously in agreement.

The applause stops. The chairman turns to the right.

CHAIRMAN: And finally, I think it’s the turn of JASMINE to second the motion against.

JASMINE stands and pulls her cue cards from her pockets.

JASMINE: Thank you, chairman. My learned friend in the opposition offers a very valid quote from Blish. But he forgot to mention, Mr. Blish’s amendment – which was – I think – that its always good to walk on the wild side now and then – and I think if the artists religious or otherwise had followed the oppositions foggy thinking, we’d have been a poorer place. Excuse me.

JASMINE takes a sip of water.

JASMINE: My colleague has clearly stated the legal and sociological reason’s Dogma can’t be banned, so instead, if you will indulge me – and I hope you will since the opposition didn’t seem to give an argument but a list – I’d like to tell a story by way of illustration.

TOM sits down in his chair and gets comfortable.

JASMINE: You see this isn’t a new motion. Not too long ago, another film was banned throughout the country for very similar reasons. It was 1979, and the film was ‘Monty Python’s Life of Brian’.

CAPTION: ‘1979’.

EXT. OUTSIDE CINEMA. NIGHT.

This is a time before the multiplex. The cinema is a large building on the corner of a road with a box office that is actually a box and a foyer with a big log fire. A fire which isn’t benefiting the crowd of people outside. The protest has been well attended with assorted people in big thick coats freezing to death. Some even have plackards with phrases like ‘Ban BRIAN’ and ‘For the faith’ printed on. A long queue of people are lining up against the wall of the cinema looking at ‘Coming Attractions’ boards and the sign over the door “Now Showing: The Python Film”.

AMY (V.O.): I was always amazed at how many people would turn up to these kinds of protests. But I suppose it was the decade for it.

AMY is standing handing out leaflets to cinema goers as they join the line. She much younger than previously, with long flowing hair and a warm looking leather biker clothes and boots. She is chatting to a friend as he hands her pile of leaflets, a young, shorter man in a blazer and role neck jumper.

MARK: Do you like the leaflet? I mean - I hope I got - my – our – point of view across.

AMY (V.O.): MARK was a good friend. Whenever I had a problem, if I was doubting my faith, he’d always listen, and put me back on the right track.

As she straightens the leaflets out, she doesn’t notice MARK wishing she was kissing him right then.

MARK: Would you like a coffee?

AMY: Black.

MARK heads of to get his thermos. As AMY offers the leaflets to passers-by, she looks up and down the line for the film. Its date night, so there are couples cuddling, couples reading newspapers or magazines and couples tucking into crisps. Some are looking at protest grimly. One man, somehow seperated from the rest is scribbling away at a notepad. He’s in a long grey overcoat and extra long scarf. She knows him. Realising she is staring, she looks away and goes to get some more leaflets from MARK.

The man in the queue realises she was looking at him and looks back, impressed by what he sees. He looks up and down the line and turns to the couple behind.

MAN: Do you mind holding my place?

The couple nod uncertainly, and the man smiles. He approaches AMY. She has her back to him (still passing leaflets) and doesn’t seem to notice him. He looks down at his shoes slightly in embarrassment, then softly taps her on the shoulder. She turns startled.

MAN: Hello. You’re in one of my joint classes.

AMY looks slightly embarrassed as one part of her life clashes into another.

AMY: Yes. Erm . . . NATHAN? Greek Philosphy, I think. How are you?

NATHAN: I’m all right, I think.

He motions his body towards the cinema.

AMY: (incredulously) You’re going to see it.

NATHAN: I’m going to see it again, actually.

AMY: Didn’t the blasphemy work its evil the first time around?

NATHAN: Blasphemy? (he steps closer so that he can whisper) Haven’t you heard – it isn’t blasphemous.

AMY: WHAT! OF COURSE IT IS!

The man looks around implying that everyone just saw her outburst.

NATHAN: Which scene.

AMY: Well I can’t tell you that.

NATHAN: Why not? YOU’VE SEEN IT HAVEN’T YOU?

It’s now AMY’s turn to look around.

NATHAN: How can you protest against something you haven’t seen?

AMY: I didn’t want them to have any of my money.

NATHAN: Then they’d better have some more of mine.

AMY: Are you actually inviting me to see this thing?!?

NATHAN: Call it spying behind enemy lines.

AMY smiles.

AMY: Well, if you put it that way. And you’re paying?

NATHAN: I believe that was the offer.

By now, MARK is trying to carefully carry two cups of coffee to AMY. She arrives smiling almost pushing him over.

AMY: My coffee?

She takes the coffee and begins to swig down the lukewarm liquid.

MARK: Where are you going?

AMY comes up for air.

AMY: I’m going to be gone a couple of hours. I’ve got some research to do.

MARK: That person you were talking to.

AMY: NATHAN’s going to take me to see the film.

MARK is disapproving.

AMY: Well someone in the campaign has to see the thing. It can only help us to be more effective.

MARK still doesn’t agree, but nods. AMY reaches up and kisses him on the cheek.

AMY: Thanks. I’ll see you in a couple of hours.

She runs off, leaving MARK to watch after her with a look of horror and love.

NATHAN is waiting for her. He looks at his watch, then at the queue, which has rapidly disappeared into the cinema. She appears, looking stony faced.

AMY: (impatiently) Well, come on.

INT. CINEMA - FOYER. NIGHT.

The interior of the cinema is in the style of the old picture houses with candelabras and old-fashioned popcorn machine. People are crowding into the auditorium, through ground floor doors and up some stirs to a balcony.

AMY and NATHAN are passing the refreshment stand.

NATHAN: Popcorn?

AMY: Don’t push your luck.

NATHAN: (to the girl passing out popcorn) Do you have any with sugar?

INT. CINEMA – AUDITORIUM – BALCONY. NIGHT.

As AMY and NATHAN enter the balcony, it is packed with people. Its already dark and an advert is playing ‘Adora – Kiora . . . it just for me and my dog . . . I’ll be your dog . . . woof – woof – woofwoof – woof – woof – woof.’ Some what inevitably the only seats free are at the very back.

As they sit down, NATHAN with his popcorn in his lap, AMY turns to him.

AMY: Don’t get any idea.

The film starts as three camels are silhoetted against the bright stars of the moonless sky, moving slowly along the horizon. A star leads then towards BETHLEHEM.

AMY: (whispering) This is worse than I thought it could be.

NATHAN is munching his popcorn.

The film continues. BRIAN’s mother, Mandy, has been offered Myrrh, a balm.

MANDY (on screen): . . . what is Myrrh, anyway?

THIRD WISE MAN (on screen): It is a valuable balm.

MANDY: (on screen): A balm? What are you giving him a balm for? It might bite him.

The auditorium fills with peels of laughter. NATHAN laughs. AMY is not happy.

The theme tune starts . . . ‘BRIAN, the babe they call BRIAN . . .’

AMY gets up.

NATHAN: You’re going.

AMY: I can’t sit and watch this.

NATHAN: The next scene is great. Its got Jesus in it.

AMY: Throw tomatoes at him do they?

An irritated man in front of him turns.

IRRITATED MAN: Sh!

NATHAN: (to irritated man) Sorry. (to AMY) Look, please stay.

AMY looks around and thinks for a moment.

AMY: Tell you what. I’ll stay. If you come to church with me on Sunday.

NATHAN double takes at her.

NATHAN: This Sunday?

AMY: Going once. Going twice.

NATHAN: I’ll do it. Now, will you please, just sit down. Please.

AMY sits down again smugly.

EXT. CINEMA – PROTEST OUTSIDE. NIGHT.

The protestors have downed their placards, have no one to protest to now. Some are drinking coffee. MARK is opening his lunch box. Inside are two silver wrapped packets of sandwiches. Each with a white sticky label. One has ‘MARK’ written on it in black felt pen. The other reads ‘AMY’. MARK sighs and picks out his own closing the box.

INT. CINEMA – AUDITORIUM – BALCONY. NIGHT.

The film has moved on some more. It’s the scene where BRIAN’s been scooped up by the alien spaceship which subsequently crash lands on Earth. As BRIAN staggers out from the wreckage, A PASSER BY looks at him with amazement, having witnessed both his fall and his rescue.

PASSER BY (on screen): You jammy bastard!

Again the audience falls into laughter. MARK turns to AMY and realises she is enjoying herself. She smiles at him and helps herself to his popcorn.

EXT. CINEMA – PROTEST OUTSIDE. NIGHT.

MARK has open his lunch box again. Only the sandwiches with AMY’s name on them remain. He lists them out.

INT. CINEMA – AUDITORIUM – BALCONY. NIGHT.

The film is finishing. Some people are chatting, other people are whistling along with Eric Idle. AMY and MARK are oblivious to all this.

NATHAN: So?

Amy is smiling.

AMY: It wasn’t so bad.

NATHAN: So harmless.

AMY: (reticently) Oh, it wasn’t harmless. Definitely not.

NATHAN: But you enjoyed it!

AMY: Yes. But people are going to be seeing out of context. The only way that film would be harmless is if they were giving away a copy of the gospels with every ticket.

The PROTESTORS have consolidated now and are marching in a circle with the placards. All except MARK, who is sitting on a bollard waiting for AMY, who arrives eventually, NATHAN in tow.

MARK: Should we be burning the placards?

AMY: Not yet. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.

MARK: Tomorrow.

NATHAN: We’re going for a quick drink. You’re welcome to join us (in a way which say ‘Oh no you aren’t).

MARK: I can’t. I’m driving the minibus.

AMY nods some mock understanding. She turns to NATHAN.

AMY: Give me moment.

Nathan heads off and starts chatting to the protestors.

==============

It's a horrible opening -- long and wordy -- and if I was starting this now I'd ditch the flashback structure (in which Jasmine would eventually be revealed to be the couple's daughter) and voiceovers and open on a lateral tracking shot from the people queuing up to the protesters stopping on Amy with her coffee. And I wouldn't have Nathan convince Amy to to go into the cinema on the first night -- I'd have him return on consecutive nights until she's eventually won over, the end of the first act having them fall in love despite their differences.

Film Day two. Here's the only letter of complaint I've written about film. It's 1997 and I'm really, really pissed off ...

Dear Sir or Madame,

I am writing to you by way of a thank-you. One of your films has helped me through a mental block which I have had since I was a child, and I thought I would write and congratulate you.

I have always had a problem with walking out of films. I have spoken to friends and read magazine articles, and both have described leaving movies in the middle quiet flippantly. I have even seen it happen. But I have never understood how someone could do it. I mean, I’ve paid my money at the box office, so I might as well see the film. This has meant that I have sat through some really awful films. But I never thought would come to walking out.

Then I went to see ‘Batman and Robin’. The trailer had made this seem like a very exciting film, in the tradition of the rest of the series. I thought George Clooney would fit the bat-suit in the dark tradition of the comics, and I loved Alicia Silverstone in ‘Clueless’. Arnie seemed to have his usual carisma. And as Batman jumped into the Bat-mobile, I still thought that I would be in for an enjoyable two hours.

Then the film began proper, and even before the opening credits ended, my heart began to sink as I realised that yet again, I had been cheated. As scene after scene passed, I felt myself cringing, my intelligence not only being insulted, but being kicked to the floor, and stamped upon. I should have felt like a child on a spending spree at Hamley’s. Instead, I felt like a kid whose been given 50p and told to choose something from the second hand bargain bucket at a Car Boot Sale. I should have been enthralled, thrilled and losing myself in the new reality. Instead I found myself trying to work out what was wrong with the film .... while I was watching it.

I began thinking of the script, characterisation being reduced to exposition. How there were simply too many characters, meaning that some simply didn’t have anything to do but stand around looking pretty. I thought of the so-called action, tension being lost because everything felt so artificial, so obviously controlled by a Special FX operator somewhere. I thought about how the actors seemed to be more concerned about having a good time, than giving strong believable performances and making the audience care or not about the characters, hoping they would get by on star quality and nothing else (although I felt sorry for George Clooney - he still gave Bruce Wayne some charm despite the dialog, and the guy who played Alfred, as dependable as ever). I got as far as when Poison Ivy repeated the Joker’s line from the first film (as if we’d think it was funny) ‘This place needs re-decorating,’ and I’d had enough.

I know it is not really Warner Brothers UK’s fault. You merely had to advertise and distribute what your American big brother delivered. And you have to be congratulated - the second biggest opening weekend in British history is a slam-dunk.

But I am writing this letter for people like me, the people you cheated. The people who gave you their money, because they trusted you to give them an entertaining time and who instead left annoyed, insulted, and out of pocket, Why should I trust you again to entertain me?

Perhaps I could suggest a way. You could write back and apologize. You could refund the price of my ticket at my local Odean (£3-00), and suggest a film in the next couple of months that you are certain I will enjoy. Because if I don’t you can bet you will be hearing from me again, very, very soon.

Yours faithfully,

Stuart Ian Burns.

No refund, and I didn't write again. Though I did walk out of some more films.

Life In the early 1990s, when I should have been studying for my A-Levels and with the internet not having been invented yet, for reasons that have dropped through the cracks of my brain, the younger version of me collated/edited a volume of writing that he was particularly impressed at the time. Having thought it lost in time, it dropped out of a pile of old magazines that had been gathering dust, early Heat magazines and the first ever issue of Personal Computer World. A cheap hardback A4 lined book with about a hundred pages, half of which has been written on in a variety of black inks.

After a carefully planned out index/contents page which must have been compiled once the rest of the book had been filled in, the first page contains the following introduction. Even though the rest of the book is handwritten, this was typed into First Word Plus running on an Acorn Archimedes and printed out on a dot-matrix then stuck. The school had made me prefect in the school computer room, which though it meant that many lunch times would be spent supervising young kids more interested in scanning pictures of Jet from the Gladiators into the computer than doing any actual work, had the reward of being able to use the computers during free periods.

I didn’t have a girlfriend at school.

It’s not a great piece of writing; it’s very naïve in places and betrays a scratchy knowledge of the subject – though notice even at that age the differences between different editions of Shakespeare’s plays was a topic with which I had a keen interest. If the sixth paragraph makes little sense at least it's pondering what I would have made of the internet had it been available then. Probably, downloading pictures of Jet from The Gladiators and whole lot more besides.

Introduction -

During our time on Earth, many (including myself) have tried to answer the question of what gives Man the compunction to create literature, and why only a select few actually get their work into print. What gives each work its individuality and why anyone has the right to say whether a work should be allow to be given out to a wider audience.

Before the innovation of mass printing techniques, if a work was popular it would be hand copied by scribes by the people who actually wanted the work. This meant that piece of writing (The Canterbury Takes by Chaucer for example), would only gain a very small audience, and because of the differences in skill of the scribes (either through style of laziness), the final editions might eventually not be what the writer intended.

Matters were made either worse or better (depending upon your point of view!) with the invention of the simple printing press by Caxton. This innovation meant that some writing could be read by more people, but it was still a thing for the rich to actually own a large collection of printed books, and these still contained problems due again to lazy typesetters (hence the differences between the Folio and Quarto editions of William Shakespeare’s plays – whose original intentions will have to be left to theologians and critics until time-travel is invented).

Slowly, more advanced methods came into use, and more and more writers got into print. And, while many classic works were written, many of these works were composed (in my opinion) by writers fill of their own importance, who wrote about things which would appeal to a very small audience and which were beyond many reader’s comprehension – and very often anyone but the writer.

At the start of the pop-culture of the twentieth-century, the pulp novel appeared. It was once said that there is a novel in all of us, and it seemed as though everyone on Earth wanted to set out to prove it. Everything from ‘The Incredible Melting Man’ to ‘French Passion Goddess’. It was during this time that my favourite genre, ‘Science Fiction’, came to a head. Even at this time some great writing was produced, and many writers began asking, and answering themselves questions ‘best left to saints’.

Now, in the 1990s, the written word has come to something of a renaissance. The written word has become an even more popular form of media, and has over taken the television as a more open type of entertainment. Indeed, television has become little more than a supplement, and perhaps even a breeding ground for ideas.

Here is my own personal and totally biased selection of quotations from many sources. Everything from poetry of my own and by other writers, to song-lyrics which have given me some kind of meaning, to prose and a meaningful or amusing retort between two characters in a novel.

So, to you, the reader, here’s wishing you a good read, and I hope that whichever century it is to you right now, it will give you some idea of what kind of literature a teenager of the 1990s might have liked (we weren’t all philistines you know!).

Stuart I Burns,February 1992.

Understand that over the years this volume's importance has built up in my head attaining mythic status, the literary equivalent of Son of Rambow. My memory was that during this period, I discovered art and film and literature and began to think about the world in a far more complex way than before, that it was full of Shakespeare and movie quotes and song lyics and that it captured the moment when stopped being a teenager.

That's all there; it's also a mess of John Donne and Gerard Manley Hopkins, but also song lyrics from Debbie Gibson, Wilson Philips, Paul Simon and The Bangles the profundities that topped the sitcom Family Ties. Page 61 features quotes from Woody Allen, Art Linson and Lewis Mumford. Flicking through the pages is like talking to someone who doesn't yet know what they like, but whatever it is they think they like they like it very much.

It ends on the scene from the film Stand By Me, the one in which River Phoenix tells Wil Wheaton that he won't amount to anything because people have an expectation that he's a dead beat that won't amount to anything. Perhaps I was subliminally pointing to something I've always had to deal with (and I suspect we all do) the difference between the person I project, the person I think I am, and the person I really am.

Life With any luck, but nine o'clock tomorrow morning I'll be on the train to Birmingham where I'll be changing for Stratford Upon Avon where I'll be hero worshipping for five days. It's not my first time. In 1992, the family took a coach trip there because it seemed the thing to do when studying Shakespeare, but then I wasn't catagorically 'a fan'. I am now.

It's the longest holiday I've taken in twelve years, since the Edinburgh trip in 1998. In between there's been three days in Paris, a night or so in Oxford (the so being the overnight coach trip there and back) and an overnighter to Cardiff in 2004 for reasons I'm sure you can guess, though note I got there first.

I'm exiling myself from the web. No twitter, no blogging, no email, no rss. Which isn't to say there won't be anything here to keep you entertained; a couple of people commented at the Tweetup the other day that I'm a fairly prodigious blogger and there doesn't seem to be much point in changing that just because I'm away from a computer. This blog will not go dark. Ghosts of the past, as you'll see.

An antidote, then, to last week's monstrosity. This works simply because it's a free-wheeling meringue, a well chosen song to cover, put together with a modicum of taste. At time of release, a television documentary followed producer Ray Barretto as he met these singers and musicians in recording studios, homes and hotel rooms recording their contributions and simultaneously putting together the video which we then saw being layered together. It was a technical marvel which made the result sound even more impressive. True, Ronan Keating segways into Robin Williams and a leather jacketed Lionel Ritchie is in there too, and the Spice Girls are in their post-Geri period, but there's Joe Cocker to Iggy Pop and Chrissie Hynde and Skin and Jackson Browne which balances everything out somehow. Plus it ends on Natalie Imruglia giving it some elfin Tom Waits... (or indeed Mick Jagger ...)

We talked about this at the Tweetup. It is a great piece of work -- and as I said then my favourite moment is the freeze frame at the end with the three astronauts all caught in highly undignified positions.

Easily done. Really. No one can know everything and there does seem to be a bond of trust in the science (and arts world) that the academic won't screw over the publisher by submitting rubbish masquerading as research. I wonder how many examples of this do slip through.